When the bull rears its head, it could only be up to no good, for it portends a certain conflict of power, with all its ferocity and brutality. Though this had a positive take when Lamborghini christened its sports coupe Miura, after the bull breeder, its resonance of power was just that. In Picasso’s Bull’s Head from a Found Object of a bicycle seat and handlebars, it pointed to a direction in life. But against the macabre backdrop of 1969, a black red stain in Malaysia’s political history, there’s precious little cheer between the conflagration of red and orange on the left, and the towering sentinels in the deserted landscape in twilight blues on the right. After all the constellation Taurus bookmarks a tenuous link between passionate strength plus ambition and conversely a brooding cauldron of terrifying anger. Certainly, an episode of infamy without  the triumphant ‘Ole’ flourish. Khalil Ibrahim’s innate flair of anatomy clinched him 2nd Prize in Lever Brothers’s Malayan Life national art competition in 1959, that indirectly won him a Pahang State scholarship to study at the St Martin’s School of Art and Design (National Diploma in Design, 1964; and post-graduate, 1965). And since returning in September 1966, he had become a full time artist painting in batik, watercolours, acrylic, oil, pastels, pen (ink), and he had even dabbled in etchings. In 1970, he had the first double solo at Samat Art Gallery and then was invited for a solo in Indonesia. He had a retrospective of sorts celebrating 50 years of painting in A Continued Dialogue exhibition at Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur, in 2004. Khalil was also actively involved in the Malaysian Watercolour Society (MWS) and was its founder member. An outstanding southpaw, he joined the MWS painting expeditions to Sweden (Simrikshawn to Uppsala) and India (New Delhi to Nainital / Jeolikot).